Dubai presses on with port takeover ("American double standards")

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

By Dayan Candappa 14 minutes ago

DUBAI (Reuters) - Dubai Ports is pressing ahead with a takeover that gives it control of six major U.S. ports despite a Congress committee vote to block the deal, sources familiar with the deal said on Thursday.

Government and company officials in the United Arab Emirates declined comment on Wednesday's vote by U.S. lawmakers to block the deal on the grounds that handing the ports over to a Gulf Arab state-owned firm would threaten U.S. national security.

But the sources said the vote had not taken Dubai Ports any closer to relinquishing the six ports at the center of a political firestorm. "The vote in the House of Representatives has not change anything in that respect. We are not at that point," one Dubai-based source said.

Analysts said the political furor was bound to provoke businesses in the world's biggest oil exporting region, which is an increasingly important source of financing for the huge U.S. current account deficit. "It's American double standards. Do you think that businesses and governments here won't react and even retaliate?" said Wadah Al Taha of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060309/pl_nm/security_emirates_ports_dc

[Drum]

1. "relinquishing"???

OMG!

Man to sales-clerk at bookstore counter: "I want a book on 'chutzpah,' and I want you to pay for it."

[unblock]

4. sales clerk to man: "ok, it's right next to 'self-esteem for dummies'"

:rofl:

[zanne]

11. I love that!

I wonder how Barnes & Noble would like that!

[meow2u3]

2. Crybabies!!

Terrorist sympathizers are whining that they can't easily sneak into the country to wreak havoc on our people. :nopity:

[jimshoes]

3. I guess crap like this is bound to happen

when you spend money that you don't have and wind up borrowing it from loan sharks basically.

[Mike Daniels]

5. My dad has been in the merchant mariner business since college

and has worked with port management issues and he says that this has been totally blown out of proportion.

There's a difference between ports and terminals (which is what the company is looking to manage) and the media chose to ignore the difference in favor of creating a sensationalist story.

[sattahipdeep]

8. Heres a thought

How does someone become an ex-terrorist?

[fasttense]

9. I use to manage ports and terminals

I can tell you they are both intricately involved in security. There is no clear break where terminal operations begins and port security ends. They overlap and mingle.

But right now, our ports and terminals are security free. There really isn't much of any security. If you don't care about the horribly lax security now, you are not going to care if the UAE runs them.

[sattahipdeep]

6. "The vote in the House of Representatives has not change anything"

MR. MCCORMACK: The State Department is part of an interagency process which is led
by the Department of Treasury. We did participate in it. This interagency process did a
thorough review of all aspects of this proposed sale. And the bottom line finding was that
there was no basis on -- no national security basis on which to block the sale going
forward.

"no national security basis on which to block the sale"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

The former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit joined in the
criticism.

"The fact that you are putting a company in place that could already be
infiltrated by al-Qaida is a silly thing to do," said Mike Scheuer, who
headed the CIA unit until 1999.

[ClassWarrior]

7. That would imply that the criminals in office had ANY standards...

...much less "double" ones.

16+5=2006

NGU.

[DeltaLady]

10. National security is not a trade issue.

There is and should be a delineation between free and fair trade and the security of a nation. We are not proposing to charge a given country a premium on desalinization equipment, that would be a trade issue. Instead, we are trying to secure our boarders from possible threats, and that is a matter of national security.

The american people, by a large margin, seem to concur that NO other country should have holdings which conflict with security concerns; this is not an arab-american issue, it is a foreign power-american issue.

[BR_Parkway]

12. UAE - we prefer to call it "Republican Hypocrisy", not American

double standards - good grief, you've been business partners with these people for decades, don't tell me you still trust Re-pugs?